Adventures of Caine and Kerrigan Part two Family is Everything
by Phoebe Darling
Summary: Horatio Caine finds out that he has a half-sister. He never knew about her. The first time that he finds out about her is when she reaches out for help. He saves her but who did it. His sister is strong and too stubborn for her own good. She is a Marine which gets NCIS involved. Multiple attempts are made on her life. When the dust settles they go to New Orleans to help a friend.
1. Chapter: When Two Agencies Meet

Chapter: 1

When Two Agencies Meet

When Horatio asked Ryan to access Renee's restricted military personnel file, it had sent up a red flag to the NCIS office in Washington DC as well as Renee's commanding officer in Afghanistan.

Her CO contacted the Director of NCIS Leon Vance, asking him if they are the ones trying to access the highly restricted personnel file of Staff Sergeant Renee Hope Kerrigan.

Vance has no personal knowledge of what the CO was talking about, so he calls Senior Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs in to ask him.

Now Gibbs has no idea what his boss and the CO in Afghanistan are going on about but said he'll have Agent Timothy McGee look into it.

McGee being the excellent computer hacker he is, he easily found out who is looking at the file. He very quickly tells Gibbs that it is an officer with the Miami Dade Police Department crime lab that is trying to read the restricted personnel file.

McGee goes on to tell Gibbs that the file is that of a Marine. She was captured and tortured to get information in Afghanistan twice. The first time she was rescued by the SEALS. The second time she was held for months until she escaped and found her way back to base.

She was a canine handler and trainer before her capture. When she escaped, her captors put a massive price on her head dead or alive after she had killed about sixty Taliban terrorists.

They only knew about the sixty Taliban terrorists because she had set up a massive explosion. Her base was able to see the massive cloud of thick black smoke. It was no longer safe for her to stay in the country.

She was shipped back to the states where she joined Border Patrol as a canine trainer and handler in South East Texas. She was so good at her job that the local drug cartels put a price on her head.

That caused her to move to the Miami-Dade Police Department, where she was attacked, abducted, tortured, and killed by Serbian Mercenaries. The Miami-Dade crime lab still had no idea who hired Serbian Mercenaries.

Working with Gibbs for seventeen years, McGee knows what his boss is thinking. McGee is spot on with what his boss is thinking when Gibbs, wordlessly goes into Vance's office to talk the director into letting them help Miami-Dade in capturing the person responsible for the kidnapping, torture, and murder of a United States Marine.

Since Gibbs is also a Marine, Vance knows that he will not take no for an answer, so he relents saying, "Let me call Miami-Dade and ask if they can use any help."

"Lieutenant Caine, you have a phone call from the Director of NCIS in DC. It's about your sister's case," is what Horatio hears from the lab's receptionist.

"I'll take it in my office," is how he responds.

"This is Lieutenant Horatio Caine, Director, how can I help you."

"I have an agent here who is a former Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant, who is determined to help since they never leave a man behind."

"We would have come sooner, but we just became aware of the case when you attempted to access her restricted file. NCIS usually will investigate whenever military personnel is involved."

"If you can use a little help, maybe some fresh eyes and more resources, I can send you two agents. They will assist you with the case of your officer's assault and murder. You, of course, will be in charge. My Agent only wants to help a fellow Marine."

"I certainly can use some fresh eyes since we hit a roadblock and have not made any progress in quite a while," Horatio's response surprises him.

He usually doesn't ask for, nor does he ever accept help from outside agencies.

"My Agents can be wheels up in twenty minutes. They will be touching down at the Miami-Dade International Airport in two and a half hours. The agents will be former Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant Gibbs, and Special Agent Timothy McGee. They will meet you at the airport."

"I'll send an officer to pick them up and bring them to the lab. Thank you for the offer of assistance."

Hanging up the phone, Horatio can't help but think that had been the strangest phone call that he has taken in a long time.

Back in DC, Vance calls Gibbs in to give him the go-ahead. Gibbs has permission to take Tim McGee with him and help with the case in any way that they can.

When Gibbs has got the go-ahead, he tells McGee, "Wheels up in twenty, McGee we have an assault and murder of a Marine Corps Staff Sergeant in Miami. Everyone else is staying here."

McGee is caught off guard, but he was ready since he always kept a go-bag in his car. Gibbs and McGee manage to catch a flight to Miami with a Navy SEALS team that is flying down to Miami for a training mission.

A SEAL on the team recognizes Gibbs as the Agent who saved his kid brother from a terrorist cell in DC.

In a move of gratitude, the SEAL takes out his dive knife and presents it to Gibbs as a gift.

When the two NCIS agents arrive at the Miami Dade International Airport, they are met by Detective Frank Tripp. Tripp had been sent to pick them up by Lieutenant Horatio Caine.

In classic Tripp style, Frank introduces himself to these new agents in his gruff Texan voice.

"My name is Sergeant Frank Tripp. Lieutenant Caine sent me," Tripp extends his hand to shake hands with the new agents.

After pleasantries are exchanged, Gibbs and McGee are very interested in getting to the lab. They want to catch the person responsible for the killing of a Marine. With Renee being a fellow Marine, Gibbs is determined to solve her assault and murder.

Gibbs and McGee had thought that Renee was killed. That is how the lab has been processing the case.

Horatio is not willing to risk his sister's life. He knew that whoever it was that hired the mercenaries will try again if they think that she survived the assault.

Horatio meets the agents at the front of the building to escort them inside. Once in the elevator, Horatio pulls a move straight from Gibbs's playbook. He stops the elevator between floors to talk to the new agents about the case. He doesn't want to risk someone else hearing the information.

Horatio tells them that Renee is alive, but they are treating it as a homicide to keep the victim safe, going on to say that the victim is also his half-sister.

When Gibbs sees someone pulling one of his patented moves, he knows something is up. He can't have imagined that the information he is about to hear would be what it is.

When Gibbs hears Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Renee Kerrigan is alive, he is very relieved. Gibbs, now wants to ask her some questions.

"If Staff Sergeant Kerrigan is alive, then I need to ask her a few questions about her attack," Gibbs says to Horatio.

Horatio is not sure he wants to put his sister through another interview, but he ultimately relents and leads the two federal agents into his office.

Renee is busy entering information about closed cases into the database on her brother's desktop computer in his office. Horatio just reminds himself that once you're a Marine, you will always be a Marine.

Addressing her at her rank, Gibbs knows that she will feel more comfortable. He knows that she will open up more and be much more relaxed. Gibbs calls it, and Renee jumps to her feet at attention.

"Staff Sergeant Kerrigan, I'm Gunnery Sergeant Gibbs, Senior Field Agent for the NCIS field office in Washington, DC. They sent us to help investigate your assault and attempted murder. At ease, Staff Sergeant, Marines take care of their own," Gibbs says, winking at her.

Asking his fellow Marine, "What can you remember about your attack at your house. Can you remember anything that you might have forgotten when your brother talked to you."

Renee quickly does feel at ease since this person understood what she had gone through. She knows that this fellow Marine has her back and will help Horatio realize what it is to be a Marine.

"I think that I remember a few new details, but I'm not certain, sir," she tells her superior officer.

Renee might have left the Marine Corps, but she still respects the Marine Corps hierarchy and the Marine Corps motto "Semper fi" Always Faithful. That motto she takes very seriously.

"I remember one of my attackers telling me that he doesn't care how long it takes for him to break me because he was going to break me no matter what."

"I'm a Marine and a canine officer I would sooner die than give up my dog, and that was exactly what he was asking me to do. Echo and Charlie are my partners who would gladly die to protect me, so I owe them as much.

In a way, my canines are stronger Marines than a lot of human Marines that I know. I trust my dogs more than I trust most people. Present company excepted, of course."

The case is a bizarre, and complicated one by any standards. Gibbs and Horatio both see different things when they look at Renee.

When Horatio looks at his sister, he sees a vulnerable woman. He sees a person who, a few months ago, was barely alive but fought to live. A person who a few days ago was declared dead, but she fought to stay in the land of the living.

When Gibbs looks at her, he sees a Marine. From what he could see, she is a strong, resilient woman who can kick ass. Gibbs never saw Renee as the victim. He is indeed fresh eyes since he never saw her laying there on life support, or heard her heart flat-lining.

McGee and Benton work very well together to follow the electronic bread crumbs to find the person who had hired the Serbian Mercenaries to question and kill Renee.

The email that sent the Serbian's money went all over the world, bouncing around like a pinball machine.

When Gibbs and Horatio come into the AV lab, Benton starts to tell them what they find. When he begins to talk technical talk, McGee stops him. He knows his boss has little patience for technology, and McGee needs to dumb it down for Gibbs.

"We were able to follow the email to a house out in Hialeah." McGee is able to translate tech speak so Gibbs can understand.

Horatio is halfway to the elevator when he remembers about Gibbs. "Are you coming?" he asks the Agent.

Without saying anything, Gibbs runs right behind Horatio. Benton and McGee give their bosses the address of the person they suspect hired the Serbian Mercenaries who had attempted to question and kill Renee.

Driving to the address, Horatio calls Tripp for police backup. Pulling into the driveway, the pair is out of the Hummer immediately after Horatio puts the vehicle into park. Tripp arrives right after Horatio and Gibbs got out of the Hummer H-2.

Quickly the three of them begin to clear the house. They search the house for anyone, but there is nobody there.

Horatio touches the back of the computer to see if they just missed the suspect. He notices that the laptop is still warm, so he puts on a pair of latex gloves that he keeps in a capsule inside his pants pocket. He proceeds to open the laptop.

What is revealed is beyond shocking. He opens it up only to see a received email that reads. "Staff Sergeant Kerrigan is alive, and she is staying at 2359 North East 117th Street, Biscayne Park."

Horatio is horrified, quickly turning to face his friend to frantically ask Tripp, "Please tell me that Renee had not been dropped off at my house yet."

Tripp nods, yes, "I dropped her off on my way here, why?"

"He knows she's alive and where she is," Horatio yells, all while running back to the Hummer.

He is not going to lose her again. Gibbs is right behind Horatio when he gets to his vehicle.

They leave Tripp to secure the crime scene and to stay at the scene for Horatio's team to process the house for fingerprints.

On the other side of town, Renee is outside the house by the swimming pool, getting ready to do her nightly swim. She had fed the dogs and secured them for the night in their crates in her room.

The crates were custom made to make them bulletproof for up to 30 ought 6 Springfield. She replaced the doorknob with a deadbolt, and she placed a kick panel on the actual door and frame by herself to make her room as secure as she can.

Her dogs are always secured in the bedroom, or they are with her. Every night she swims, then goes to bed.

She is standing at the deep end, getting ready to dive in when a noise manages to get her attention. Hearing the sound makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Everything in her tells her she is being watched.

There is a loud bang, and she suddenly feels intense pain in her right shoulder. Looking down, she sees her blue bikini swimsuit turn red with her blood as well as a hole in her shoulder. She was shot again. This time Renee was shot in the back.

If the gunshot was not a through and through, Renee would never have even felt it. Falling to her knees, she doesn't have enough strength to stand up. Her body just hurt so much, and she is just so tired.

She must have passed out, since the next thing she knows, she's tied up to a chair. Someone who sounds oh so familiar to her is talking at her. For the life of her, she just can't place

him.

This person never asks her any questions directly, but he instead simply talks at her… not to her.

It isn't until he brings out his tools of torture that she is able to place him. This is the same person who had tortured her in Afghanistan.

He is also the main person who tortured her inside the warehouse in Miami a few months before trying to get information. This person is the one who had used Sodium Pentothal and electrocution on her.

Renee doesn't know how, but somehow, he found her both times. She is going to die, and she knows it.

No one is coming to save her as far as she knows. Her brother Horatio will find her when he gets home later that night since she easily recognized that she is still in his yard.

A few miles away, her brother is trying to get home. She hopes and prays that by some miracle, he will get there in time.

Horatio doesn't want to let her attackers know that he is coming, so he drives with the sirens off, but the lights on. This causes some people who are driving to take a while to see their lights. That means the drive took a little bit longer than he liked.

Renee's captors never say anything directly to her. He just starts to torture her almost for the fun of it. First, he breaks some of her fingers but gets bored with that quickly. He starts to burn her with cigarettes for the sheer pleasure of it. Renee never cries out due to the pain.

Her torturer burned her for several minutes before he callously asks, "Aren't you going to beg for your life?" All while he takes out a cattle prod.

Being the Marine she is, Renee spits on him. This is the wrong thing to do since he just responds by electrocuting her with the jacked-up cattle prod.

Renee stifles back a scream of pain. She is not going to give this monster the satisfaction of hearing her scream.

By this time, Horatio is only a block away, but she doesn't know that he is that close. She isn't sure she can fight any longer because she is just so tired, and it hurts so bad.

By now, her torturer is done with her. He is busy getting ready to push her into the pool. She is still tied to the chair, so her attacker has to know that she will drown.

Her attacker never hears Horatio pull up in the Hummer until he hears someone kicking down the front door. Horatio doesn't want to waste time unlocking the front door and opening it. He will just replace the door later.

In a panic, her attacker kicks Renee's chair backward, causing her to hit the back of her head on the concrete hard. He pushes her into the pool with her still tied up to the chair. That makes her sink to the bottom of the pool very quickly.

Gibbs and Horatio hear a splash when they are clearing the house. That causes the two of them to run to the open sliding glass door.

Getting to the opening five minutes after they hear the splash.

It is a classic shootout situation, but her attacker is going to die, whether it is by Horatio's hand or by Gibbs's.

Horatio is looking all around the pool area. He desperately searched for his sister. Finally, he notices something at the bottom of the pool. When he realizes that what he is seeing is blood, his heart sinks.

With fear in his eyes, he nods to Gibbs as he dives in only to find his sister tied to her pool chair. They make eye contact, and they both nod to each other.

His sister is clearly struggling to stay conscious. He can see that both her head and her shoulder are bleeding rather profusely. His clean pool is quickly turning red with his sister's blood.

Horatio knows that Renee can hold her breath for a long time; he just doesn't know how long she has been down there.

He learned his sister could hold her breath for a long time the hard way. On more than one occasion he found his sister at the bottom of the pool. She was not moving so he dove in. Renee was in a deep meditative state and didn't even realize what was happening. Her brother pulled his sister out of the pool and immediately started doing CPR. She gasped for air but was never in real danger. Eventually she told her brother, "Unless I am tied to a chair or bleeding don't worry about me.

In this situation he could clearly see his sister was both bleeding and tied. This was an obvious Horatio is also not sure if his sister is going into shock.

Surfacing in the pool, Horatio sees that Gibbs had already put two bullets into the attacker's chest and one into his head as per protocol.

"Knife… I need a knife," he pleas with Gibbs for help with cutting his sister free from her chair.

Horatio doesn't know Gibbs rule #9, Never go anywhere without a knife. Gibbs tosses the M-Tech pocket knife that he always keeps in his back pocket to his new friend. His only other knife is a fixed blade, and he can't throw that one since it will cut Horatio fairly deep.

Horatio goes back down to the bottom as he cuts his sister loose. Getting back to the bottom of the pool, Horatio notices that his sister is no longer conscious.

Renee has already gone into shock. The bullet wound to her shoulder and her head wound both caused massive blood loss.

Gibbs dives down to help Horatio cut Renee loose using the dive knife that the SEAL had given him.

They finally get Renee loose, so they both grab her from her armpits and swim to the surface. Once at the surface, the two men swim as fast as they can to take her to the stairs.

They need to get Renee out of the pool. Her head is bleeding rather profusely from hitting her head on the concrete. Her shoulder is also still bleeding from the gunshot wound.

The two gently place Renee's body on the concrete when Horatio desperately checks his sister's Carotid Artery for a pulse. He does feel a very weak heartbeat, so at least she is alive.

When he loses her pulse, Horatio just panics. He has to get her heart beating again. He just can't lose her... Not like this... Starting CPR, he doesn't stop until the medics arrive at the scene.

He knows that if CPR is still being performed when the paramedics get to the scene, the medics will have to continue providing it until they get to the hospital.

He is not willing to give up. The paramedics have a portable defibrillator in the ambulance. The medics shock her heart once at two hundred fifty joules but get no response.

Charging it to three hundred joules, they try again but still get no response. Finally, when they charge it to three hundred sixty joules, and shock her heart, they get a steady heartbeat.

The paramedics had already managed to get the water out of her lungs. They had fed a long and thin tube, called a suction catheter, down her windpipe to the water, and sucked it out. This got her breathing on her own.

She might be breathing on her own, and she might have a steady pulse, but she will not open her eyes or respond in any other way.

Horatio tries to get her awake by shaking her gently and patting her face. "Nae… Nae… Open your eyes, sweetheart… Come on, open your eyes," he pleas with his sister.

He remembers thinking to himself, "My God… Nae… why do these things always seem to happen to you? This is your third coma in four months."

Part of him is glad she is in a coma since she could use the time to heal. His baby sister overworks herself, and it had almost killed her. Renee needs to rest, but she doesn't do still.

Gibbs wants to stay to make sure she is okay, but he sent McGee home since he is married and has two small children.

Sitting in her room watching her sleep, the duo's attention is suddenly drawn to Renee as she sleeps.

Her eyes are darting all over the place under her eyelids. She is twitching and jerking like crazy. Gibbs looks over at Horatio to see him completely focusing on his sister.

He asks Horatio, "Does she do this often?"

"Only when she sleeps. She rarely sleeps more than two to four hours a night, and even when she sleeps, she only does it like one hour at a time. At least she's asleep," Horatio responds.

Renee continues to twitch and jerk in her sleep. While she is in the coma, Gibbs allows Horatio to read his sister's full and completely unredacted military personnel file.


	2. Chapter: Military Truths

Chapter: 2

Military Truths

What is revealed makes it quite clear why she doesn't want to sleep and why when she does, she twitches and jerks the whole time.

Renee had joined the Marine Corps when she was just eighteen years old in the year 2000. By the time she was twenty-two years old, she was on her second tour of duty. When Renee was thirty-one, she was on her fifth tour of duty in Afghanistan. She was forced out of the Marines when she was only thirty-two years old in 2014.

Renee was in Afghanistan, and her acts of bravery became known all over the country. They say she had no fear or concept of fear. She tended to act first and think later. The safety of her canine and the safety of other servicemen were her only concern.

She was awarded two Silver Stars. One of them she was working with Atlas. She and her first working military canine were in a caravan when it was ambushed by terrorists. The caravan stopped, and IED's or grenades had destroyed several of them.

There were a lot of wounded servicemen in the convoy. Renee and Atlas were uninjured.

The two of them went around to check on the injured soldiers. Renee had Atlas pull some of the more injured servicemen away from the site. James O'Shea was among the more injured servicemen that day. Coming back, the canine began to pull the less serious injuries away without Renee telling the dog to do it.

While Atlas acted on his own, Renee ran to the front of the caravan and jumped into the gunner's hummer.

Driving the hummer, she looped around and got between her convoy and the terrorists. Renee laid down suppressive fire while Atlas pulled the injured to safety. When the convoy was clear of injured, Renee signaled to the dog to stay where he was. This time the canine obeyed.

At that time, Renee acted very recklessly or bravely depending on your point of view. Renee was vastly outnumbered, and she knew it was probably a suicide mission, but she called in an airstrike on her exact location. The airstrike met the intended targets, but she was severely injured by shrapnel in her right arm and right leg.

Her actions saved a lot of servicemen and left no dead Marines. She decimated the Taliban with the airstrike. For her actions, she was awarded a Silver Star, an Army and Marine Corps Medal, and a Purple Heart. Atlas was awarded the Lois Pope Medal of Courage for his actions on that day.

While in Afghanistan, she was kidnapped twice. The first time was a year into her eighteen-month second tour of duty. During which she was held captive for three months.

In that time, she was routinely tortured and beaten. The Navy SEALS, with a few Marines attached to the Navy, eventually came to her rescue.

Her canine partner had been killed as he tried to stop her kidnapping. Renee sees her partner, Atlas, get shot point-blank in the head with an AK-47 round right in front of her.

An AK-47 round would be a 7.62x39. Witnessing her partner's death caused her to go quietly with the kidnappers without her fighting at all.

Renee blamed herself for her partner's death, and when she was rescued, she was sent stateside for a full psychiatric evaluation, which she did eventually pass.

Nine months after she was sent stateside, Renee was cleared for duty and was sent back to Afghanistan for another tour of duty.

She was fine for her third and fourth tours. Renee's canine partner during those two tours was Charlie.

Between her fourth and fifth tour, she managed to get Charlie to bond to a new partner since the canine's other partner had been killed.

During her fifth tour of duty, she got separated from her canine and the group. By this time she was thirty-one years old.

The Taliban grabbed her again, but this time, nobody knew where she was being held. No one was coming to save her since they thought that she left willingly because she still blamed herself for her first partner's death.

Only one person on base thought that she didn't disappear on her own volition. The only reason that Renee had gotten separated from the group was a suicide bomber.

When the bomb went off, it distracted everyone on base. The Taliban was able to grab Renee and take her off base before anyone even realized what had happened.

The idea that she left on her own couldn't have been further from the truth. This time she was held for five months. In that time, she was beaten, waterboarded, flogged, and tortured. They burned her with chemicals and acid repeatedly on her back. A leather cattail was also used on her already burned back.

How she got out of where she was being held, she couldn't remember at the time. By the time she managed to get back to base, everyone had thought she was dead. She was so bloody that she actually looked like she was dead.

When they saw her walking back through the base, only one person ran to help her. The one who ran to help was probably the last person that you would expect would be crying at seeing this missing serviceman. It was the base's Marine sniper.

Renee and the sniper had formed a close bond since she was there for him when his wife was raped and murdered years earlier.

Her CO then had to tell Renee that her young canine partner, Delta, had been killed when he went searching for her on his own. He had left the base during the night and was found dead near the side of the road a few days later.

They found several bullet wounds on the dog. She never recovered from the death of Delta, so when the military found out that she had a price on her head, they sent her back to the states to be rotated out.

The military was sorry to lose her since she was the best canine trainer and handler they had in decades. Other branches of the military would fight to get their hands on one of her canines.

Closing her file, Horatio is startled by his sister, thrashing in her bed. She is flailing around so wild that both Gibbs and he together have to physically hold her down until the doctor or nurse can come in and administer a sedative.

Horatio is both horrified and amazed by what his sister had gone through. The information that he read in her complete, unredacted military personnel file makes it quite clear why she is so intent on protecting her canine partners at all costs.

While she is in a coma, Renee develops a routine of light twitching, turned into thrashing, followed by sedation every day all day. This goes on for four days straight. Everyday all day, there was no change in Renee's condition. It is day five with zero change in his sister's Glasgow coma scale.

With that in mind, Horatio feels safe to leave in order to take Echo on one of the police dog's bathroom walks.

Gibbs had already gone into the hall to take a phone call from his boss.

Walking into each other in the hall, the two friends nod to each other in passing.

"Renee is still sleeping, but I need to take Echo to the bathroom," Horatio whispers to Gibbs as he heads to the elevator.

Gibbs nods in understanding.

While Horatio is outside, taking Echo for one of her bathroom walks. Gibbs is taking a phone call from his boss back in DC, Leon Vance. His boss is trying to call Gibbs back to DC since they had gotten a new case.

This leaves Renee alone for a few minutes. During the small period of time that she is alone, just so happened to be the one time that she opens her eyes.


	3. Chapter: The Delusional Hallucination

Chapter: 3

The Delusional Hallucination

She may have opened her eyes, but she is not awake, she is deep in a very vivid delirious hallucination.

Taking off her sensors and pulling out her IV, Renee is up and on her feet without anyone being any the wiser.

It is that moment that she looks over at her bedside table. Immediately she sees the SEAL dive knife that Gibbs had left out from when he was getting dressed, so she grabs it.

Right then, an unsuspecting nurse walks inside the room to check Renee's coma scale. Before the nurse knows it, Renee is standing behind her, holding her by her upper body.

She put the dive knife against the nurse's throat. She is pushing down almost to the point where it is cutting through the skin. Scared for her life, the nurse screams for help.

The scream got all the nurses and doctors to be in her room. They were all attempting to talk Renee down, unaware that she is in a vivid delirious hallucination.

For about five minutes, it is a standoff between a delirious and hallucinating Renee, and a room full of doctors and nurses. At that moment, her brother Horatio and Echo come off the elevator. Hearing all the commotion around his sister's room elevated his fears. Without a word, Horatio hands Gibbs Echo's leash and walks into his sister's room.

It isn't until Horatio got into the room and he sees the whole situation does he realize that his sister is in another vivid hallucination.

Horatio is able to get the other doctors and nurses out, so it is just the three of them as he is trying to get his sister to let go of her hostage.

He is able to get Renee to let go of her nurse hostage when he puts a tiny little pinhole in her hallucination.

He tells Renee, "The woman you are holding is innocent, she has done nothing to hurt you."

Slowly she loosens her grip on the nurse.

Eventually, Renee pulls the knife away from her hostage's throat as she pushes the nurse away from her.

The nurse runs out of the room with a silent nod to Horatio. Her hostage might have been freed, but the situation is still beyond volatile. He still needs to get the knife away from his sister.

That objective is a lot easier said than done since he doesn't want to hurt her. He can't do what he would normally do to defuse this kind of situation. He would typically just shoot the person. However, this person is not only his baby sister, but she is not aware of what she is doing or where she is at the time.

The knife that Renee grabbed is a very large Navy SEAL dive knife. The blade itself is about six inches in length and is a fixed blade. It was given to Gibbs by a Navy SEAL as a thank you gift for saving the SEAL's little brother.

Gibbs had left the knife on the table in Renee's room when he had stepped out to take a phone call from his boss back in DC.

He is looking at the knife in his sister's hand closely. She has the blade sticking out of the bottom of her left hand. Renee had been holding the knife in a classic hold when she was holding the knife to the nurse's throat.

She had done a defensive knife flip maneuver spinning the blade. The blade is now sticking out the bottom of her closed fist. It had been sticking out of the top of her hand.

His baby sister is ready for some serious hand to hand combat, holding the knife the way that she is.

Horatio has only one thought in his head. He just has to get that knife away from his little sister before she hurts herself or worse hurts someone else.

The blade of the knife has a double edge on it. One side is straight and razor-sharp, and the other side of the blade is serrated, much like a saw blade with a slight curve at the end.

Horatio just has to get that blade away from her. He had to without hurting his sister in the process at all costs. He is willing to do that if it is the last thing that he ever does.

Slowly and calmly, Horatio reaches out to his sister while he attempts to talk her into giving the knife to him.

In her hallucination, she doesn't recognize that it is her brother, who is standing in front of her. To her, the person who is standing in front of her is a dangerous person not to be trusted.

Defensively she lashes out and slices Horatio from the center of his left hand to his elbow. The cut is not deep, but still, Horatio should stop and seek medical treatment for the cut.

Horatio, however, is not ever going to give up on keeping his baby sister safe.

He quickly regroups then he grabs her left hand around her wrist with his right hand. Her left hand still has the knife firmly in its grip.

Renee still refuses to give up the knife, so she spins around towards the inside. By doing so, she slams her brother against the wall of her hospital room.

At the top of her lungs, Renee is screaming, "Let me go… you monster. You can't keep me here. You can't break me."

During the ensuing struggle, Renee slashes at her brother with her right hand then her left hand. Between slashes, she switched hands from left to right and back again.

Horatio has let go of his sister's left hand, but instead, he has her entire upper body. He is, in essence, giving his sister a bear hug.

Horatio is still trying to get his sister to either drop the knife or better yet to just give it to him.

Again she screams, "Let me go… let me go… I'm not going to go quietly… you can't take me alive."

His sister is getting weaker and weaker by the minute. H doesn't quite understand why she is getting weaker.

In her desperation to get away, she puts the knife into her left hand. She uses the last bit of her energy she has and drives the blade deep into Horatio's outer left thigh.

Horatio finds himself letting out a suppressed scream. He doesn't have any time to react since his sister had suddenly stopped her struggling and fighting against his grip.

Thinking that she finally snapped out of her hallucination, Horatio loosens his grip on his sister's upper body ever so slightly.

When he partially releases his grasp on his sister, she slips lifelessly towards the tile floor. He very quickly realized that Renee is not conscious and is able to grab her body before she slammed into the floor.

It is then, and only then that Horatio is able to see what hit his arm earlier. He is finally able to see why she had stopped fighting against him.

It is blood that hit his arm earlier during the struggle. During the fight, Renee is able to slice both of her arms. From her elbows to her wrists multiple times.

The slashes on her left arm are shallow and smooth, while the slashes to her right arm are deep and jagged.

Renee has lost so much blood she had lost consciousness. That would explain why she stops resisting him.

Seeing all the blood and not seeing his sister move at all, he fears that he lost her. Horatio screams, "Help. Please get me a nurse. She's cut herself badly, losing consciousness."

When the nurses hear Horatio scream for a medic, they rush back into the room. Horatio quickly tells the doctors and nurses what happened in the room and how he got his sister to drop the knife. All while hiding the knife sticking out of his thigh since his sister is his priority.

His sister needs the medical staff more than he does. Since he had left the knife in his leg, he is in no real danger of bleeding to death. The blade is working rather proficiently as a cork by stopping him from bleeding profusely.

His sister had lost so much blood the medical staff isn't sure if they can save her. Renee is strong and tenacious, but with everything she has endured, she is in a very severely weakened state.

The whole time that Horatio was struggling with his sister, Gibbs was just outside keeping both Echo and the nonessential staff back. Gibbs was unaware of what was going on in her room.

When the doctor and nurses finally rush Renee into surgery, Gibbs is finally able to look into her room.

Walking inside is like walking into a war zone. Bloody gauzes are completely cluttering the floor. There is a large pool of blood near the wall.

Gibbs remembers thinking to himself, "How can anyone lose that much blood and survive."

Gibbs, however, doesn't know how strong Renee is or that she has fought her way back from the brink of death on multiple occasions.

After the scare of Renee being in her delirious hallucination, Gibbs has to call Vance back. He tells his boss, "McGee can handle the case. I can't leave Renee yet. She was stable, but she woke to a delirious hallucination. Now she is critical again. I'll come back to DC when Renee is stable again."

Vance knows that he will never be able to get Gibbs away from a fellow Marine in need, so he let Gibbs stay.

Before they took her into surgery, Horatio offered to donate his blood since he was the same rare blood type as his sister. The two siblings are both AB-. The doctors then told Horatio that Rene had lost so much blood volume that she was only on plasma.

Renee was losing blood as fast as they could put it in. During surgery, the doctors needed to close her injuries to her forearms and wrists. Then and only then could they give her the blood that she needed so desperately.

After the medical staff had wheeled her into surgery, Alexx finally got a good view of Horatio. She could see the knife sticking out of his outer thigh. Horatio had finally ended up dropping the sheet that he had been using to shield his injury from the doctors.

Alexx asks her friend, "So do you want me to take that knife out of your thigh, or do you want to keep it there for emergencies? Don't worry about your sister. She is in good hands."

Horatio needed to be wheeled into another surgery room to tie off the arteries and veins that were severed when the blade entered his thigh. As Renee's gurney was wheeled back into her hospital room, Horatio, Echo, and Gibbs were waiting with great anticipation.

Due to her delirious outburst, the doctors chose to take precautions to prevent it from happening again. Putting restraints on both of her wrists and both her ankles, this leaves Renee tied to the bed. Seeing his baby sister strapped to the bed like this just about killed Horatio.

The next three days go by with Renee on powerful sedatives through her IV, which keeps her asleep. They also prevent her from having any further outbursts.

The doctors do let her come off the sedatives, but if Renee starts to thrash around Horatio or Gibbs, push the sedative button, and the morphine drip put more sedative painkillers into her vein.

On day eight, as Renee came off the sedatives, she doesn't start to thrash but rather opens her eyes-having no memory why she is in restraints.

"What happened H..? Why am I...? Where am I…?" Are her first words to her brother."

"I had the strangest dream. I dreamt that I was back in Afghanistan. Back in the cave with my torturer. I was fighting to escape." Renee tells her brother to which her brother answers after a pause to think.

Quietly thinking to himself, "Now I know where you were and what you were doing deep in your vivid delirious hallucination."

Horatio looked at his sister, "Well, you were in a coma for a week. You had a delusional and hallucinational outburst the last time you woke up. You had grabbed a knife, and we wrestled over it. You cut your arms from your elbows down to your wrists. I almost lost you."

Renee suddenly gives her brother a worried look.

"I stabbed someone and had somebody else at knife-point, please tell me I didn't really do that to someone," she begged her brother.

Horatio is unable to relieve her fear when she looks at him and sees that his left hand is all bandaged up with a small amount of blood seeping through the gauze.

"I stabbed you H. I'm so sorry." Her brother soothingly tells Renee, "It's okay sweetheart you were in a vivid hallucination, and it wasn't your fault in the slightest."

"Please tell whoever it was that I held at knife-point that I'm sorry," she quietly asks her brother.

Horatio responded the way that you would think that he would. "It's okay sweetie, they know you were hallucinating but if you want me to, I will."

"We did get the guy that put the hit out on you and the dogs. The monster who tortured you is dead. Gibbs put two in his chest and one in his head. You're safe.

We got everyone involved in your assault, kidnapping, and torture. They are all either dead or in custody," Horatio finishes talking to his sister.


	4. Chapter: A Bomber Strikes

A Bomber Strikes

Renee is still admitted in the recovery ward at Miami-Dade General Hospital when Gibbs is called back to Washington DC.

"Leroy Jethro Gibbs" had managed to prove a point to Horatio that Renee had been trying to make repeatedly. Gibbs helped her brother understand that when you are a Marine, you do not stop until the job was complete.

Gibbs could have left and gone home to his team in DC, but Renee was not awake yet.

Gibbs didn't know whether Renee was going to survive or not, so he was going to stay until he knew those two things. His role in her case was to solve her assault. He had stayed to make sure that this Marine was going to be okay. Since solving her case was only half of Gibbs's mission, he stayed.

Winking at Renee, Gibbs tells her, "Rule #9 is NEVER going anywhere without a knife," giving her the SEAL dive knife and a new thigh sheath.

Since he will never be able to carry it past the security screener at the airport and he is very proud of this fellow Marine and her sheer will to survive, he gives it to her.

Renee gratefully accepts the gift and tells her new friend that she will never go anywhere without the new knife. She removes the blade from the sheath, inspects it closely before she places it back in the sheath and attaches the knife and sheath to her left thigh.

Being a lefty, Renee has a lot of things on her left side. Her Sig Sauer P-226 is always on her left hip along with about three extra gun magazines in her left thigh bag and in her 5-11 Stryker cargo pant pockets. Renee keeps her back up firearm a Kimber micro in her left thigh bag also.

She has a fourth Sig magazine in her right thigh bag. In the right side thigh bag, Renee also keeps two magazines to her backup firearm.

In total, Renee almost always has a total of fifty-one rounds on her, including one in her Sig's chamber. Plus, the eighteen 9mm of her Kimber and the one in the Kimber's chamber.

Now the knife will always be attached to her left thigh since Gibbs told her is Rule #9- Never go anywhere without a knife. She is very grateful that Gibbs was able to show her brother just how deep the Marine vow and connection goes.

"If you ever need anything and I mean anything, don't hesitate to call me anytime," Gibbs tells his new friend.

Getting into a cab in front of the hospital, he shakes the hand of Horatio after he graciously accepted the hug that Renee offered to this fellow Marine in her hospital room.

Both Renee and Horatio were sorry to see their new friend go, but they also hoped and prayed that they would never have to call him for help. However, they know that they have a powerful ally in DC should the need ever arise.

Renee tried but failed multiple times to show Horatio that once you are a Marine, you will always be a Marine. Everyone knows that there is no such thing as an ex-Marine.

Her body is getting stronger and stronger every day since her delusional outburst, which was really more of a vivid hallucination than anything when she grabbed a nurse and held her at knife-point.

While Renee has no actual memory of the incident, it ends up traumatizing Horatio beyond description and watching his baby sister in that kind of state and with him being completely and utterly powerless to help his baby sister in any way whatsoever.

To Renee, it is just a dream, but to poor Horatio, it is a horrible nightmare that he can't ever escape from or forget.

Renee has to beg her brother to go back to work since she knows that Miami needs him more than she needs her brother with her at all times.

The doctors still want Renee to stay in the hospital for observation, and Renee wants her brother to leave the hospital. Horatio is not willing to leave her alone there.

She repeatedly tells her brother that she will not be alone if she has Echo with her.

Finally, when Horatio leaves her in her room to talk to her doctor, Renee has to call Eric.

"Please, you have to get him out of here. He is driving me crazy. Make up a reason why you need him in the lab, even for just an hour. Please, I beg you," she pleads with Eric to call Horatio.

Luckily for Renee, Eric knows all too well about Horatio's personality. He also knows well, just how concerned for his family Horatio can get.

As luck will have it, the team got a new case that they really do need Horatio's help since it involves an unexploded bomb. Horatio is the team's explosives and arson expert, so he will be able to solve it better than anyone else.

To Renee's relief, Horatio's cellphone rings shortly after he walks back into her hospital room.

"Nae... Sweetheart, I have to go back to the lab.

Something's come up, and they need me. It looks like you will be getting your wish."

Horatio tells his sister lovingly since she has been begging him to leave for some time.

Horatio reluctantly leaves the hospital to help his team find the bomber by taking apart the bomb and looking for the bomber's signature.

Every bomber has a signature that they leave on or in

the bomb, whether they mean to or not.

It took about a day for Horatio to isolate the bomb fragments that contained the bomber's signature.

The bomber had twisted the wire that was connecting the PETN (PentaErythritol TetraNitrate) explosive to the blasting cap and detonator three times counterclockwise.

The signature sounds very familiar to Horatio, so he has Ryan search for unsolved bombings in the area during the last year.

Horatio's gut instinct turned out to be dead on. There had been three unsolved bombings in the last year, and one of them matches the signature of this bomber.

After Horatio talks with the FBI, he finds out they had done a controlled detonation so they could reassemble the bomb safely. The FBI did attempt to disarm the bomb, but they were unable to disarm it, so they did the next best thing.

He is able to talk them into giving him the pieces of that device. With both bombs in the lab, he is able to rebuild two bombs and put them both through the FBI's database.

Putting both of them through the database, he is able to connect them both, and thus he is able to sign his team's case over to the FBI for them to further investigate.

With Horatio gone to the crime lab, Renee is able to talk her doctors into letting her out early since the medical staff don't really want Horatio back at the hospital.

He was constantly asking them how she's and if she's getting better, he is not only driving his sister crazy, but the doctors and the nurses too.

Her doctor agrees, but only if Renee agrees to continue with her strength and balance training and have regular check-ins with him. She tells her doctor that she had grown up surfing, and he tells her that surfing will work as both a strength training and a balance exercise.

When Horatio finished at the lab, and he goes back to the hospital, the doctors inform him that Renee will be discharged from the hospital the following day. Horatio is thrilled to hear that his baby sister is being released in a day. He just wants his sister home where she belongs.

Horatio walks out of the hospital the next day as he wheels Renee to the car in a wheelchair since that is the protocol.

When the two of them walk through the front door of Horatio's house, they are both nearly knocked down by two large, very excited dogs.

Echo weighs eighty-five pounds, and Charlie, who weighs seventy-five pounds, are both police dogs.

They are both very happy to see their partner again after two weeks. The four of them settle into a routine fairly quickly, with Horatio going to the lab before Renee.

She meets her brother at the lab after her morning surf session. Horatio had taught her to work in the lab. He was trying to keep her busy. The dogs would just relax at his house for a change


	5. Chapter: Who Is Renee Hope Kerrigan

Chapter: 6

Who Is Renee Hope Kerrigan

When Renee was young, she lived in a very small town in South East Texas near the Gulf of Mexico. Her hometown was so close to the Gulf that their high school had a Surf team with Renee as the team's star athlete. She was on the softball team, swim team, volleyball team, and even the varsity women's wrestling team.

She was offered a full athletic scholarship to Texas University, but she turned it down to join the United States Marine Corps. The rest is history, so to speak. Renee was not your typical female.

She was a horse trainer long before she was even in high school. Before her eighteenth birthday, she had already trained close to a dozen mustangs and sold them to the Border Patrol and other Law Enforcement agencies for their mounted divisions.

She would go to her local BLM auctions, and she would bid on two yearling foals at a time. She usually chose fillies since they are more protective of their owners than colts. Renee knew that the girls would grow up to be testy but loyal beyond description.

Most mares will protect their riders at all costs. She learned that when her personal horse, who was a beautiful black and white paint mustang, had protected her. Renee had bought the paint at a BLM auction when she was just eleven years old and trained her by herself.

After training and riding the horse for three years, the mare refused to throw her off when a mountain lion was attacking them. The mare could have thrown her and saved herself so easily. Instead, the horse chose to face the predator and fought it off until the cat had grabbed the horses muzzle and was suffocating her.

She had been struggling and fighting, trying to free her rifle. Finally, Renee managed to get her Browning BAR .30-06 rifle out of the scabbard on the offside of her leather western saddle and shot the cat dead.

Renee still needed to dismount from the mare and put the dead cat on the horse's back since she did need to turn the cougar into the Game Wardens for testing. Renee would regularly go deer hunting and boar hunting with her Catahoula Leopard dog at her side.

From that moment, on she would only work with mares and fillies. Horses trained by Renee were fought over by the members of the mounted patrol in law enforcement agencies all over since they were that well trained.

Renee might have been sixteen to seventeen years old, but she knew what she was doing. She had been training horses since she was just 11 years old. Riding horses since before she could even walk, Renee was almost impossible for a horse to throw off.

She started riding ponies when she was just eighteen months old. Graduating from ponies to horses when she was six years old.

She would earn the horse's trust and never forced herself on them. She would never use fear or force to get the Mustangs to do anything.

Using her proven method, her horses would do anything she asked them to do and do. They would do anything to keep her safe.

Renee was their leader since the Mustangs trusted her implicitly, and she trusted them implicitly. The mares that she worked with saw her as their lead mare.

She would often fire bizarre weapons on or near the horses since her mom would buy her any kind of firearms that young Renee would ask for.

She fired the strange guns off her horse's backs or near them, meaning that they were bomb-proof.

The largest gun she ever fired from next to the mustangs was a Barrett 50 BMG chambered with armor-piercing incendiary rounds.

She would never be able to fire that type of gun off of the Mustangs. She was not strong enough to lift a gun that weighed forty pounds over her shoulder and withstand the massive recoil that it had.

Mustangs that were trained by Renee didn't flinch a muscle when the gun fired the bullet traveling nineteen hundred miles an hour.

The largest gun she ever fired off the horses back was a Henry Repeating Arms Rifle-lever action chambered in 45-70 Government extreme penetrating rounds.

This ammo and gun are more famously known as an elephant gun and elephant round.

This round travels much slower than the 50 BMG's 1,900 MPH but still had great stopping power.

Traveling at 818 MPH, it can penetrate the thick skull of an elephant.

Her horses never gave any of the guns that she fired while she was mounted on them or standing next to them any notice.

The Mustangs were even tank-proof and helicopter-proof, though she never told anyone how she managed to expose her horses to enough tank fire to make them bomb-proof.

Helicopters were easier to expose them to since she kept her horses near the local small craft airport, which had several helicopters going in and out at all hours of the day. Customs and Border patrol even kept their helicopters at that particular airport.

When she joined the Marine Corps right out of high school, Renee was forced to sell the mare that saved her life.

During Marine boot camp, she was awarded the highest marks available for her just about perfect marksmanship.

Renee was able to out target shoot her trainers when she repeatedly hit forty out of forty of the targets since you don't need to hit anywhere near that many to pass.

Hitting all her long-distance target shots from an impressive two miles away.

When she hit her far shots perfectly, her trainer put them further away. Again Renee hit all of her targets. Her trainer again moved them up to two miles away. She still had perfect scores.

Her drill sergeant and other high ranking officers begged her to become a sniper, but her heart and passion was dog training.

When Renee was seven, she trained her first dog. She had gone to the local shelter and asked for the least adoptable dog. It took her six months to train the dog completely.

Quickly the two of them graduated to training for protection. Renee learned at a very young age that she had a natural connection to dogs. Her first dog was a Catahoula Leopard dog. Renee always had an affinity for that particular breed.

She started out as a normal dog handler. When her trainer saw Renee's connection to the dogs and her ability to train even the shyest dog to become a military working dog, they told the base commander that Renee needed to be transferred to another base and given her own training commission. Renee was clearly an expert in the field. She taught her trainers more than they could teach her.

Renee could take just a normal shelter dog and teach it to do anything. Renee was transferred to a base near New Orleans, where she was given a canine trainer commission.

Dogs trained by Renee were the most sought after and highly desired military working dogs of the entire United States Marine Corps.

Her dogs were unstoppable and loyal to their handlers almost to a fault. The only thing that would stop one of her dogs from reuniting with their partner would be the death of the dog.

Dogs trained by Renee were awarded the purple heart and the Lois Pope K-9 Medal of Courage, (The highest honor a canine can officially earn) more than all the other trainers combined.)


	6. Chapter: An Everyday Routine

An Everyday Routine Leads to a Drive-by

For two weeks, Renee has a routine where Horatio would leave for work early. Renee then would grab her O'Neal surfboard and wet suit. Snatching up the keys to her dark green F-350 XLT super duty truck. She quickly drove down to her favorite surf spot.

One day when Renee is getting ready to paddle out to her favorite surf spot, she gets startled. Suddenly she thinks that she hears a car backfire, which then causes her to fall forward a little.

Thinking to herself that she is getting a little jumpy with everything that has happened to her lately.

After her surf session, she dries herself off with her sun-warmed black towel. Putting on her black cotton t-shirt and olive drab 5 11 Stryker Cargo pants and strapping the SEAL dive knife that Gibbs' had given her to her thigh sheath on her left upper leg. She proceeds to clip her Sig Sauer P-226 .357 to her left hip. Then she tightly laces up her black leather combat boots.

Renee might have left the Marines five years before, but she still dresses like an active duty Marine. Serving in the Marines for fourteen years, Renee is more comfortable wearing the clothes that Marines would wear.

She is rushing a bit to get dressed since she is already running a little late to the lab. Horatio and his team are waiting there for her.

This routine of surfing then off to work lasted about two more weeks until one night when Horatio and Renee just finished watching Law and Order SVU in the living room, and they are getting ready for bed.

Horatio is already in the hall with Echo when the shots start. The shots are coming from a car outside through his living room window. The gunshots don't stop for what seems like ten minutes, but in reality, it is probably only thirty seconds.

The shots just went on...And on…nonstop. Without thinking, Horatio dove for cover while grabbing Echo by her leather collar. He had somehow managed to get Echo to lay down all while the bullets are flying into the house.

With Horatio lying in the hall, he can't see his sister. He clearly hears a car peel-out in the street in front of his house.

Laying on the floor, Horatio screams out to his sister, "Nae… Sweetie… Nae... Nae... Sweetheart... Are you alright?"

Scrambling to his feet, the panic begins to rise in him when he doesn't get a response from his sister.

"Nae... Nae... Don't do this to me. Please just say something... Anything," he begs his sister.

Rounding the corner of the hall that opens up to the living room, he sees why he didn't get a response from his sister. To his horror, his sister is lying face down on the carpet. One of the dogs lays prone on top of her.

Horatio fears that his sister was shot, so he rushes over to her side. Getting there, he sees that the dog is Charlie. When he sees that the dog had been shot in the shoulder, he quickly realized what had happened.

The canine had jumped on his sister, knocking her down, taking the bullet for Renee. Standing on her back, Charlie was protecting his sister's, and the canine's partner with the dogs vary life.

Charlie is still alive, but first things first, he has to turn his sister over and see if Renee was hurt in the drive-by shooting.

Turning his sister over, he is relieved to see that she is not hurt. Renee's eyes open, and she gasps for air and coughs as she catches her breath. She just had the wind knocked out of her when Charlie had jumped on her knocking her down.

When Renee is finally able to talk, she is more concerned with where Charlie is then she is with getting the wind knocked out of her.

Echo had already come over to Renee when Horatio had turned her over to check her for any injuries. Licking Renee's face, Echo helped wake her partner up.

Renee is just starting to panic when she speaks to her brother. "H, what happened? The last thing that I remember was standing up to walk to bed with Charlie." Remembering Charlie, Renee's eyes widened,

"Charlie… Charlie… Where's Charlie!"

Scanning the room quickly, Renee sees shattered glass everywhere and bullets sticking out of the walls and furniture. Her eyes finally settle on the form of Charlie lying almost motionless on the floor.

"Charlie! God no… not Charlie… Charlie!"

Renee screams while she rushes to be by her former partner and best friend's side.

When Charlie sees that Renee is okay, she lets out a soft whimper and attempts to wag her tail with a quiet thump...thump...thump all while she tries to get up to go to her partner.

"Easy girl... Shhhh... Relax… Sweetheart, you are okay," Renee whispers to her old canine partner.

Stroking the dog, she attempts to calm the police canine down. Renee needs to keep the dog laying down and not let Charlie get up under any circumstances.

Realizing that his sister is okay, Horatio quickly turns his attention to Charlie. Horatio gathers the dog in his arms. He and Renee run into the garage and jump into the Hummer.

They need to get their hero to the emergency vet as quickly as they can if they are going to save her.

"We have to get her to the vet as fast as possible, H…

You don't understand what this dog has done for me and just how many times she has saved my life. We just have to save her.

"Renee is begging and pleading with her brother just to hurry up and get to the vet."

Running into the emergency vet's office, Horatio is carrying the seventy-five-pound dog in his arms. The two officers are completely out of breath since they had run the whole way from where Horatio had parked the Hummer to the vet's office.

"Help... Our dog has been shot in a drive-by. She is an MDPD police canine," Renee tells the receptionist at the front desk.

Charlie is, in fact, a former Marine than a Customs and Border Patrol canine. The dog had never served MDPD, but since Renee is an MDPD canine handler, she doesn't feel bad stretching the truth about her partner.

The receptionist tells the waiting surgeon who rushes out, carrying a stretcher to bring the injured canine back into surgery in order to remove the bullet and bullet fragments.

Charlie's x-ray shows that the bullet entered the dog just left of her chest, and it had exited out the dog's shoulder shattering the shoulder bone beyond repair, which caused the surgeon to have to amputate the dog's entire shoulder blade and all the bone and bullet shards. The bullet itself had fragmented on impact with the dog's shoulder.

Renee and Horatio are both waiting anxiously at the vet hospital until the doctor comes out with the good news. They will be able to take the hero dog home the next day. However, go home to where Horatio's house is now a crime scene.

Horatio had called his team to get to his house and process it as a crime scene. He is very determined to get the people responsible for the drive-by shooting.

Most of his team goes to his house to gather evidence, but Eric drives to the emergency vet to question his brother in law and Horatio's sister about what happened at the house. The sooner the two cops are interviewed, the faster they can solve the crime.


	7. Chapter: Who Shot at Renee

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p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; min-height: 19.1px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 16px;"The crime lab still have no idea who and why someone would shoot up Horatio's house. They didn't even know who is the actual target./span/p  
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p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 16px;"Horatio is convinced that he is the target since they had already got the person who put the hit out on Renee and her dogs./span/p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; min-height: 19.1px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 16px;"Renee, just knows that she is the target. She can't really explain why she feels that way she just knows that she does. Renee just thought that the person that they had shot at Horatio's house, the person who had tortured her both in Afghanistan and at the warehouse in Miami would really have no reason to want her dead that badly. He was just hired to torture her in both places and nothing else./span/p  
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p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 16px;"Calleigh the teams ballistic's expert is able to trace the bullets used in the drive-by to a small newly formed gang looking to make a name for themselves./span/p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; min-height: 19.1px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 16px;"When Horatio and the team go to the gang's last know location, some of the gang attempt to engage the police officers in a shootout. They don't realize that they are messing with an excellent shooter who has an impeccable aim, that person being Horatio./span/p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; min-height: 19.1px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 16px;"Some of the gang, however, are smart enough to surrender to the police. They know that the police's only connection to any crime is the fact that they had bought the bullets. The police still could not single out a gang member as the shooter just yet./span/p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; min-height: 19.1px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 16px;"One of the smart ones is the gang leader Juan Ortega who came in without incident. Horatio is very eager to talk to the suspect and ask him why would he shoot up Horatio's house and who was the target./span/p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; min-height: 19.1px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 16px;"Surprisingly Juan is very open to talking to the police with or without a lawyer present. Quickly he signs a release form to talk to the cops without his lawyer there./span/p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; min-height: 19.1px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 16px;"Juan knows that he has information that Horatio wants. He also knows that Horatio will accept a deal in exchange for the info./span/p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; min-height: 19.1px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 16px;""I can tell you who the target was and the reason that we shot your house up. I can't tell you who paid us since we were hired through the TOR network. We all know that the TOR network is totally anonymous. I'll give you the information in exchange for immunity for the shooting," is what Juan offers to a very shocked Horatio and Frank Tripp./span/p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; min-height: 19.1px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 16px;"Before Tripp can process what Juan has said, he hears Horatio say, "Deal." Neither of the two officers are prepared to hear what Juan has to say./span/p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; min-height: 19.1px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 16px;""You were not the target Lieutenant Caine. The target was the woman who was staying with you. We were hired to kill her in exchange for a large shipment of weapons."/span/p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; min-height: 19.1px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 16px;""We needed the weapons to make a name for ourselves. Shooting up the home of a very well known and feared police officer was just icing on the cake as far as street creds are concerned."/span/p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; min-height: 19.1px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 16px;"The gang leader finishes talking, which left Horatio and Tripp standing there too stunned to say anything in response./span/p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; min-height: 19.1px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 16px;"With this realization, Horatio has a choice to make. Does he move the two of them back to his house now that they had got the shooters or does he move the two of them into a safe house until they catch the actual person who wants her dead?/span/p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; min-height: 19.1px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 16px;"The more Horatio learns about his sister, the prouder and prouder he is getting. He has known that she was his sister for about four months and she had almost died an equal number of times./span/p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; min-height: 19.1px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 16px;"This small, fearless person is not only his baby sister, but she was also a highly decorated Marine and Border Patrol officer plus a well known and loved Miami-Dade Police Officer just like him./span/p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; min-height: 19.1px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 16px;"He can't think of a stronger, braver, or more courageous person than his baby sister. Horatio just can't risk her life nor the lives of her canine partners any more than she has already risked them./span/p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 16px;"Horatio is not willing to move them to a safe house since he still doesn't know who gave up her location the last time she was tortured at Horatio's house, so he opts just to move them all into the crime lab since they have sleeper couches in the offices and showers in the bathrooms./span/p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; min-height: 19.1px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 16px;"Horatio and his team will take the dogs for their walks since he doesn't want to give any shooter a chance to shoot and kill his sister. This set up works quite well for about a month./span/p  
p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; min-height: 19.1px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /p  
p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span class="s1" style="font-size: 16px;"The team has nothing to go on to find out who hired the gang since the teams AV guy Benton was unable to trace the post putting the hit out on Renee. He was able to remove it and to place a tracer on the name. If someone tries to put the hit out again on Renee or her canine's they'd be able to trace it back to the sender, hopefully./span/p 


	8. Chapter: Sniper

Chapter: 9

Sniper

Renee is going a little stir crazy by this time. She has been cooped up for a month with no access to the outside. Horatio eventually does cave due to her incessant begging.

He allows her to go outside for a few minutes with a full police escort. Renee walks out of the crime lab with a full police guard just that she can enjoy the sun for a few minutes.

She just adores the sun, happy to feel the sun's warmth on her body, but just as she turns to go back inside, a single shot rang out. Horatio is standing next to his sister when they hear a gunshot. The shot finally meets its intended target.

Horatio is hit with high-velocity blood spatter from his sister as Renee drops to the ground gasping for air.

Horatio fumbles to catch her before she hits the ground. She's been shot in the chest, which causes her lung to collapse.

"I can't breathe… H… It hurts too much to breathe…," she whispers to her brother as she is starting to panic.

She is trying to take big deep breaths and just can't catch her breath.

"Nae... Nae… Sweetie… please just take slow, easy, shallow breaths." Horatio tells his baby sister before she loses consciousness in his arms.

Horatio looks up, searching the building tops for a shooter but sees nothing. The shooter had got away, or so it seems.

Luckily there is a paramedic at the precinct who is there giving their eye witness testimony. When the medic hears the gunshot, he rushes outside. He wants to see if he can help with any of the wounded.

Seeing Horatio hold the limp body of a female police officer, he runs to see if she needs any help.

Horatio sees the medic and tells them, "She was shot in the chest. Before she passed out, she told me that she couldn't breathe."

When the paramedic heard that his patient couldn't breathe, he asks Horatio if he has a knife and a pen.

Confused, H pulls out his pocket knife and a ballpoint pen and hands them to the medic.

Once the paramedic has both the pen and the knife, he quickly hollows out the pen. Then he makes an incision into Renee's chest in-between the second and third rib.

When the incision is done, he inserts the hollowed out pen into the cut. Once the pen is inserted, it releases a lot of trapped air.

Everyone at the scene hears the loud hiss of escaping air. Releasing the trapped air allows Renee's lungs to work until the doctor can repair the damage.

With her lungs able to function normally, Renee is quickly able to breathe on her own. When that happens, she opens her eyes, and her ice-blue eyes meet her brother's ocean blue eyes.

Renee is brought to the hospital with the bullet in her lung. The doctors bring her into X-rays to locate it.

The doctors are able to locate a .223 inside her lungs.

You can imagine their complete shock when they find a mysterious bullet still in her back.

Her records showed no bullet there, but the doctors can clearly see a .22 lodged in her back about halfway up. The bullet is deep in her scarred up mid-back.

"Horatio, can we ask you something. It's about your sister? Did she ever tell you she was shot in her back?"

Horatio is very confused, to say the least. He has no idea what they were talking about until they show him the X-rays that show a .22 in her back.

He just keeps thinking about it and tells the doctors that Renee had told him about hearing a car backfire and how she had fallen forward.

He also tells the doctors that Renee has no pain sensation in her back from previous trauma, so she would never even know if she had been shot in the back.

Horatio then things to himself, "I can't let Renee out of my sight or the sight of my team. She needs someone with her at all times for her safety."

When the bullet in her lung is removed, and it is handed to Calleigh in an evidence bag, it is up to her to find Renee's shooter. The bullet in Renee's back is out, but running it through their database can wait.

The bullet that is in her chest is far more important.

Calleigh finds a partial fingerprint with enough ridge detail to enter into the AFIS database. The results are quick and surprising. The team got a hit on INTERPOL.

The shooter is a disavowed, and disgraced former MI6 agent turned mercenary. The former agent is now a hired hit-man who works for the highest bidder.

The agent is named Nigel Black, and he is a wanted suspect in connection to several global unsolved assassinations of high ranking law enforcement officers. He is also wanted in the murder of high ranking military officials from multiple countries. By just looking at him, Nigel looks like just your average nondescript Englishman.

The team might have identified the shooter, but they still need to find him in a population of 6.1 million people. Benton gets the idea to put a photo of the suspect on social media since 6.1 million pairs of eyes looking for him will be more effective in locating the suspect than just the dozen or so pairs of eyes that the team has.

Horatio doesn't want to put the population in danger for fear that someone will try to approach the suspect and get themselves shot. Putting his trepidation aside, he gives Benton the go-ahead to put the photo up on social media with a hotline to call in any sightings.

Benton's idea ends up locating the suspect when a tip came in that the person that they are looking for had been spotted shopping at the local market. The sighting is verified when the team finds a photo of the suspect on CCTV.

Horatio really wants to be the one who brings the suspect in since the shooter had shot his baby sister.

Renee has survived this shooting, but Horatio doesn't know how many more times Renee can fight for her life. He is not sure how many fights she has left, but he does know his sister is tired of fighting.

Nigel doesn't put up a struggle at all, but he rather comes in peacefully. He might be a mercenary, but he doesn't kill innocent bystanders for anything. He does have standards like he will not kill children or animals for money either.

When the team's results bring them to INTERPOL, it also lets NCIS know that there is a hit on the INTERPOL network.

Gibbs recognizes the location of the hit is the same as Staff Sergeant Renee Hope Kerrigan's last known location.

Gibbs calls Horatio to talk to his friend,

"What's going on in Miami? NCIS had been notified that you got a hit on a wanted INTERPOL man. Can you use some help with questioning the suspect or do you need some back up with the suspect."

Horatio sees Gibbs not only as a great ally but also as a good friend. Gibbs had helped Horatio save Renee when she was tortured about three months ago.

Horatio feels that he owes Gibbs a great deal. Gibbs had also stayed with Horatio at the hospital until Renee was not only awake but also was clearly going to survive. Gibbs was there when Renee had her delusional outburst.

Horatio trusted Gibbs with his life and the life of his sister. Gibbs is one of the few people that Horatio knows it is safe to tell the details of what had happened to Renee since Gibbs had been there the last time.

"Yes, I can use some help with questioning the suspect. We already have him in custody, but I can always use your help," Horatio responds to his friend's request.

"I'll be down in two and a half hours. Meet you at the airport Horatio," Gibbs ends his conversation with his friend and quickly hangs up.

Horatio doesn't want to say something to the suspect that he shouldn't, so he waits the two and a half hours for Gibbs to fly down from DC to aid in the interview.

This lets the suspect sit and wait in the hole. Horatio hoped that spending some time in the hole will make the suspect more willing to talk to them.

Horatio himself drives down to the airport to pick up Gibbs. It doesn't take as long for Gibbs to fly down since he called in a favor with Tobias Fornell, the FBI's lead agent. Gibbs was able to borrow one of the agencies G-5 jets to fly down to Miami.

Horatio takes Gibbs straight to the police station. He is very eager to interview the suspect. When in the interrogation room, Gibbs just sits there in the interview room in total silence.

This was supposed to let the suspect get so very uncomfortable that he just blurts out a confession. The

suspect falls right into Gibbs's trap and confesses to everything without Gibbs saying a single word.

Nigel's lawyer can not possibly argue that Gibbs coerced the confession from his client since the video of the interview will clearly show that Gibbs never says a word.

Horatio tells himself while he watches Gibbs's tactics, "Maybe this would work on a lot of the suspects I come across."

After Gibbs and Horatio had obtained a signed confession from Nigel Black, Calleigh is free to enter the bullet that was pulled out of Renee's scarred up back into the database and search for that shooter.

The results for that shooting is no less shocking than that of Nigel Black's. The shooting that happened at Renee's favorite surf spot was a drive-by in the sense that it was done from a car.

Nobody knew that it even happened in the first place.

The shooter is linked to the night shift of the crime lab. The gun came back as a gun from a pending case involving a local drug cartel.

The night shift has a different set of workers that have not been cleared by Horatio. He is the boss of the day shift at the crime lab, so he doesn't clear the night shift staff in the slightest.

This worker is even a friend of Walter Simmons since Walter had moved from the night shift to the day shift and had earned Horatio's respect and trust over the years.

Finding out that the shooter is linked to the night shift Calleigh goes to ask Walter about this new suspect.

"Walter, can you tell me about Ava Waterson- Smith?

She is connected to Renee's shooting at her favorite surf spot. I think that she is the person who shot Renee in the back."

When Walter hears that Calleigh thought Ava is the shooter, he realizes that he might have screwed up.

Confessing to Calleigh, "I think that I totally screwed up. I went out for drinks about a month ago with Ava. I think that Renee's routine might have come up."

"I can totally see Ava doing this, though. She is cagey, and there is just something off with her."

Calleigh reassures Walter that she will not tell Horatio about Walter's fear, and rather she will leave Walter out of the reports.

Calleigh calls Tripp with her theory about Ava shooting Renee. Calleigh knows a sympathetic judge who she thinks will issue the arrest warrant with the information that they have.

With warrant in hand, Calleigh waits until Ava had clocked into work. She thought that there is no way Ava would try to shoot her way out of the crime lab.

Calleigh realizes that she had thought wrong when Ava pulls out her Sig Sauer P-226 and tries to shoot Calleigh and Tripp. The two are attempting to arrest Ava for the attempted murder of a fellow police officer.

Using a gun conversion, Ava's Sig is shooting 40 Smith and Wesson's.

The instant that the first shot is fired upstairs, Horatio thinks that he had hears shots being fired in the labs parking garage.

Taking the elevator down to the garage level, he walks out and into a shootout. Ava had gotten Calleigh, and Tripp pinned down behind a Hummer.

Horatio, in his classic style, takes a single shot with his Sig Sauer, and Ava drops dead.

"What took you so long, H," Tripp breathlessly asks his long-time friend.

A question that Horatio answers with a sarcastic response, "What… I thought that it was on TV."

Well, now they had found out who had shot Renee at her surf spot but not why she did it. They can't exactly ask Ava since she is dead.


	9. Chapter: That Did Not Just Happen

Chapter: 10

That Did Not Just Happen

Renee just can't seem to catch a break. It seems that whoever it is that keeps putting the hit out on Renee is not going to stop until he gets what he wants.

As far as Horatio is concerned, this has to stop NOW. Talking to Nigel, it becomes clear that whoever it is that kept putting a hit out on Renee will not stop until they put her in the ground.

Renee is sitting in the lab's lunchroom, eating her macaroni and cheese when the Police Commissioner came up to her.

She is busy talking to the PC when he tells her that he wants her to talk at a press conference. The PC was setting up a press conference to talk about the major drug bust that Renee was a leading agent in along with Echo.

The PC even wanted Echo there since the dog was the one that actually had apprehended the suspect. Effectively solving the case. From Renee's point of view, Echo is the real hero, not her. She can't say no to

the Police Commissioner if he asks her to do something.

Renee is very concerned about standing out and bringing attention to what she does, but when Horatio tells her that he will be right there with her, she agrees.

Horatio tries to give his sister some confidence, "You can do this, sweetheart. I'll be right there with you."

A few minutes before the conference, Horatio hands her a tiny capsule to take. When she asks him what it is for, he tells her lovingly that it will help with the anxiety she is having. Without another question, she takes the capsule.

The capsule does help relax her to the point where she can talk in public. Public speaking has always been a phobia of hers.

Renee can do everything from hitting a target at two miles away to training mustangs and dogs to work with people. She can run farther and lift more than most men, but for the life of her, she just can't get up and talk to large groups of people.

After a few minutes of the PC talking about the case, he brings Horatio up to introduce Renee.

"I'm Lieutenant Caine, let me quickly introduce you to my sister. She is a highly decorated Marine canine handler turned Customs and Border Patrol canine handler. Now she works as an MDPD canine handler. She and her dog Echo were actually responsible for bringing in the suspect in the drug bust." Horatio helps his sister up to the podium.

When Renee then starts to talk and answer the press's questions. At about that time, she thinks that she hears a single gunshot off in the distance.

Only a few seconds later, she feels a burning in her chest, and she starts to drop.

Horatio is only a few feet from his sister, and he just rushes to his sister's side. He is not fast enough to catch her when she falls to the ground.

Renee is lying face down in a pool of her own blood. Horatio's heart stops, and he carefully turns his sister over to look at her. Their blue eyes meet, and she whispers something to her big brother.

"I can't breathe, H… I can't feel anything… I'm scared, H… I don't want to die… I'm not ready…" Horatio hears his baby sister weakly speaking.

The only thing that he can think is, "This cannot be happening."

"Stay with me, Nae... Sweetheart...I know you're tired, but please don't go to sleep… You might not ever wake up," he begs his sister.

"I can't H... I'm so sorry but… but...," her voice trails off.

Renee lets out half a ragged breath and stares lifelessly at her brother as her whole body goes limp.

Her left hand that had been holding Horatio's right arm slips off, hitting the ground hard she never finished her sentence.

"Nae... Nae... But what?" H begs his sister to come back.

Horatio doesn't scare easily, but at this time, he was scared. Did his baby sister just die in his arms? Did the only blood family he had left die in his arms like his mother, brother, and his wife had already done?

Horatio is not going to give up on his little sister, so he starts to give her CPR all while the news stations are busy recording for their news live at the courthouse.

"Don't you die on me, Nae... Don't you dare... Sweetheart, don't you die on me... You have to keep fighting... Come on, breathe... breathe… Damn it... Breathe…" H begs his sister at this point. If Renee dies, H is alone.

A few minutes after Renee's shooting, Gibbs pulls up. Jumping out of his car, he rushes over to help his friend. Watching Horatio still preforming CPR on his sister. Seeing Gibbs Horatio stops for a few moments while he holds the lifeless body of Renee tight in his lap.

Gibbs quickly pulls a crime scene screen out to block the media's view of the scene. He doesn't want Renee to be on display for the world to see. Pulling out the screen also gives Horatio some privacy with his sister's body.

Once Horatio has some privacy, he quickly takes off Renee's bullet-proof vest. Her vest obviously didn't stop the type of bullet that was fired into his sister.

With the vest gone, it gave Horatio a better chance to get his sister's heart restarted again. Flack vests only work to a certain caliber of bullet before they become obsolete.

When the paramedics get to the scene, they pull out the defibrillator, and they attempt to restart her heart.

Charging the machine to two hundred fifty joules, they shock her heart but get no response.

Increasing it to three hundred joules, they attempt to jump-start her heart again. Again they get no response. They try one last time to restart her heart with three hundred fifty joules, but Renee still offered no response.

The medics are forced to confirm Horatio's greatest fear. Renee had been killed. With Renee declared dead,

Horatio gently replaces his sister's flack vest back on her lifeless body.

His sister survived five tours of duty in Afghanistan, fourteen years in the Marines, three years on the border, two years with MDPD, four kidnapping and torture incidents, a drive-by shooting, and four gunshot wounds only to be shot dead at a press conference.

Holding his sister's body in his arms, he just sits down on the cement and holds Renee as close as he could.

He doesn't usually outwardly show his own emotions, but this time he can't help it.

Horatio just sobs and sobs over the sister that he never has the chance to get to know about. Renee only came into his life about seven months before when she sent him a message saying that she was his half-sister and that she needed his help.

Since then, she impressed her brother with her courage, bravery, strength, and sheer will. She had almost died more than half a dozen times in the seven months that he had known her. He loves her more than he could explain.

When Tom Loman, the teams ME, finally gets to the scene, he needs to get Horatio away from his sister. Tom needs to get his patient ready to move to the morgue.

But how do you get a big brother away from the body of his baby sister that he felt like he failed? Tom knows that Horatio is blaming himself for Renee's death even though he also knows that Horatio is not to blame at all.

Tom calls Eric on the phone to come to the scene. Dr. Loman needs Eric's help to get Horatio away from Rene.

"Hey Eric, It's Tom. I need a little help getting Horatio away from Renee's body. Can you come down to the scene and give me a little help," he asks his friend.

The news media ran with the story, all while the investigation is still underway.

"Local Canine Handler Sergeant Kerrigan was shot dead while giving a press conference about a drug bust she took part in," was the news storyline.

Across town, Master Sergeant James O'Shea and his daughter Piper are watching Forensic Files the show is interrupted for a breaking news story. James freezes when he hears that Staff Sgt. Kerrigan had been shot and killed.

Thinking to himself, "I think that I know her."

When the story continues, "Sergeant Kerrigan was a former Marine canine handler," then James knows that he does, in fact, know her.

He was the Marine sniper that was attached to the SEAL Team that saved her during her second tour of duty when she was kidnapped the first time.

Master Sergeant James O'Shea was the only person on base when she had been kidnapped the second time

that thought she was abducted in the first place.

Everyone else thought that she left on her own.

When the news story finishes the story with a new piece of information.

"Staff Sergeant Kerrigan's brother Lieutenant Horatio Caine is investigating the shooting," James knew that name too.

Horatio had saved Piper's life seven months ago when she was shot. Horatio had carried her to his Hummer and rushed her to the hospital.

James knows what he has to do. Getting Piper ready, the two of them rush to the lab to see their friend and see if he needs any help.

Horatio is still sobbing and doesn't hear his brother-in-law approaching him until Eric calls his name.

"H, are you okay? Tom needs to get to Renee. We need to move her so that we can get the person who killed her." Eric tries to talk Horatio into leaving his sister's body.

"She's dead, Eric. I lost her... My baby sister was shot dead at a damn press conference."

Horatio is finally able to tell Eric what happened.

Ryan managed to get the news footage of the shooting, but it proves to be useless since none of the footage shows the direction that the shot came from.

Nobody knows where the shot came from since everyone interviewed gives a different direction.

Gently Tom tells Horatio, "We will move her to the morgue, and I will do the autopsy on her first. I'll give you the results before anyone else."

Horatio reluctantly allows Tom to move his sister, but he really doesn't want his sister out of his sight. He can't believe that his baby sister was just shot and killed right in front of him.

Horatio disappeared when Tom moves in to take Renee to the morgue. Unbeknownst to Tom, Horatio is there waiting for his sister when Loman gets to the morgue with her body.

Again Tom needs to call Eric for back up since Horatio will not allow Tom to start the autopsy.

"Eric, it's Tom again, yeah Horatio is here at the Morgue and will not let me start the autopsy on her. Can you get down here to help me."

When Eric gets to the morgue, he sees his brother still covered in Renee's blood, talking to Tom.

"H… brother, you need to change. Renee's blood is all over your shirt. We need you at the scene to walk us through what happened."

Horatio nods and wordlessly follows his brother. H usually drives the Hummer to the scene. However, Eric doesn't want H behind the wheel with what has just happened. Eric doesn't feel H is in the right state of mind to be left alone or to be allowed to drive. Horatio doesn't argue with his brother since Eric is probably right.

Benton, the team's AV guy, thinks that he can use some of his software to at least figure out what direction the shot had come from.

Calleigh has gotten the bullet from Tom, so she has that piece of evidence to put it through the ballistics database.

Renee had been killed by a gunshot with a .308. She doesn't get anything from the federal database in terms of who fired the gun. The only thing she is able to learn that, that kind of bullet was shot from an M40A. That is the only information that came up on the gun.

The team has nothing to go on, and they know that Horatio is not going to accept that. The fact that someone had shot and killed his baby sister, so they knew that Horatio is not going to accept not having any evidence.

Horatio thinks to himself that whoever it is that keeps putting a hit out on his sister finally got their wish Renee was dead. Maybe they will finally let their guard down, and that is when they make mistakes. That is when they get caught.

Horatio's phone rings and he answers it with a very shaky voice, "Hello." He quickly responds to the voice on the other side, "Are you sure?"

When Eric asks who it is, Horatio just brushes it off, "No one important."

Whoever it was just made the biggest and last mistake of his life. Nobody hurts Horatio's family and lives to tell about it. He would take this person down it if it were the last thing that Horatio does.

While at the scene of the crime, Echo pulled free of Horatio's grasp. The police canine runs up to the group of witnesses who are yet to be interviewed by the police.

When Horatio sees where she was going, his senses start to go into overdrive. All the years of police work told him that guilty people often can be found at the scene.

Echo sits then starts to paw and bark at the feet of a younger, taller Hispanic male who then starts to act very suspicious. Sitting, Pawing, and barking is a

trained signal for Echo. It means she smells drugs and/or firearms on the person.

Seeing the behavior of this person change so drastically and rapidly piques Horatio's interest.

"Hey, you...can I ask you a few questions," Horatio shouts at the suspicious person.

Horatio, however, knows very well that this person is not going to stay there waiting for Horatio to get there and talk to him.

The unidentified suspect then turns around and runs, and Echo is snarling and barking at the suspect while she waits for her command.

Horatio knows that they need to question the suspect alive, so Horatio gives Echo the attack command that his sister taught him when she was recovering from her first torture incident.

He knows that Echo could catch the suspect long before he would be able to.

Sure enough, Echo has the suspect in her mouth within minutes of her getting the command. By this time, Echo has chased the suspect down into the sewer system.

The canine grabbed the suspect's gun hand so he can't shoot her. The suspect drops the gun, but he picks it up and pistol-whips the dog with his weaker hand.

Echo lets go when she is knocked unconscious with a loud yelp.

She is just coming around after she was knocked out when Horatio had found her. The poor dog has blood running down the side of her face. Echo has a deep gash that the gun handle made in her head.

Horatio knows that his sister will never forgive him if Echo is killed getting this guy, so he tells Echo, "Good girl, at ease... You did well."

When he gives the police canine the stand-down command, he hears a noise of someone moving in the sewer system that they are hiding out in.

The noise was just out of his field of vision. It is very, very dark down there, so he yells out to whoever it is that is moving around.

"MDPD stop, or I'll shoot," a command that is answered by a bullet whizzing past Horatio's head missing him by inches.

He then empties his gun's chamber and magazine into the area that the shots come from.

Horatio hears something hitting the ground hard, and the bullets stop flying. H approaches the suspect who had been shot and killed by ten bullet wounds. Horatio had shot eleven rounds and only missed once. The gun's magazine held ten rounds, but as with most police officers, he always kept one bullet in the chamber.

Natalia runs the suspect's DNA and fingerprints through AFIS, and CODIS and the results are interesting to Horatio.

Horatio has shot and killed Victor Hernandez. Benton confirms that this is the person who keeps putting the

hits out on Horatio's sister when he traces the IP address to Victor's computer.

Horatio is finally able to breathe a big sigh of relief. Saying out loud to the room with all of his team inside, "Looks like we got your killer your safe now, sweetheart."

Everyone is very confused as to why Horatio says it like Renee is alive when they all saw her die.

When Horatio sees the DNA results, he goes into his office for a few minutes before walking back out. He motions for his team members to all go inside one of the lab's interview rooms.

Once everyone is in the room, he shuts both the blinds and the door. He wants privacy when he debriefs the team.

Before Horatio has a chance to start the debriefing, someone knocks on the door.

"Come in," Horatio calls out.


	10. Chapter: The Truth Comes Out

Chapter: 11

The Truth Comes Out

The door slowly opens, and Renee just walks inside. Leaving everyone in the room except Horatio shocked. Renee begins to explain how and why they faked her death.

"Horatio and I agreed that the attempts were not going to stop without me being dead unless we made people think that I was dead. We needed it to look good."

"When the PC came and asked me to talk at the conference Horatio, and I thought that this would be a perfect time to do it. We both knew that it would be broadcasted across the country."

"Horatio had drawn my blood inside some of the transfusion bags. We taped three of them to the outside of my flack vest, and I put my shirt on over and buttoned it up."

"Now I gave Gibbs my M40A and we had Gibbs stand on a building top about two miles away. That way nobody would see him. We knew that Gibbs was a

sniper in the Marines, so we knew that he could make the shot from that distance."

"Before the conference, Horatio gave me a capsule with tetrodotoxin in is a neurotoxin that paralyzes the muscles."

"Gibbs made the shot that hit the kevlar, and the blood packs. The Tetrodotoxin stopped my heart enough to fool the medic and the ME."

"I fell facedown in the blood that we had already drawn out, so I looked like I got hit in the heart. Before the medics got to the scene, Horatio had the officers block everyone's view so he could fix something on me. In reality, he removed the blood transfusion packs."

"Horatio took my flack vest off but left it nearby since he didn't want to mess with the scene to much. The paramedics shocked my heart."

"Tetrodotoxin paralyzes the muscles so my heart would not have restarted as long as the toxin was in my system so the defibrillator would not have worked on my heart until Tom gave me the antidote when I was in the morgue. He then used the defibrillator on me."

Turning to face her brother, she addresses him directly.

"I'm so sorry that I scared you with how the Tetrodotoxin affected me. I realize that you didn't know what it would look like. I really didn't want to scare you so bad."

Facing the rest of the team, she continues with the debriefing.

"When you saw Horatio at the scene, he really thought that I was dead. He never saw how the drug affects the human body directly. He really thought that he had killed me when he gave me the capsule."

"I came too in the morgue after Horatio told Tom what had actually happened and that I was not really dead. Tom gave me the antidote and called H to let him know I was awake."

"Tom brought me up when you all were out at the scene. The media ran the story that Horatio had told them. It was all a work of fiction."

"We just knew that the person who wanted me dead would let their guard down and finally make a mistake that Horatio could take them out."

"When I heard it was Victor, it all made sense to me. I kept stopping Victor's contraband coming across the border. He moved to Miami, thinking that he could start over. He didn't realize that you were my brother and that I moved here to be with you until I stopped him in that huge drug bust the one that the press conference was about."

"He saw that as an opportunity to shoot me himself, but Gibbs shot me before Victor could do it. He was there at the courthouse, and he saw me die."

"He felt comfortable enough to attempt to move his drugs since I was out of the way. I wasn't really dead, and we still got him."

"We didn't want any of you to know about it for fear of it not working. I mean, I could have died from tetrodotoxin poisoning, and we didn't want any of you guys to have to live with the thought that you shooting me actually killed me. We were not sure that it would work out the way that it did." Finishing her explanation, Renee sits down next to her brother.

Just as Renee finishes talking to the team, Charlie, who had been in the room with everyone jumps up. Without making a sound, the canine runs hobbling down the hall towards the elevator.

Running behind Charlie, Renee stops in her tracks. She can swear that she hears a voice that she hasn't heard in a very long time. When Horatio catches up with his sister, he asks her what's wrong.

"I know that voice. It is Master Sergeant O'Shea, I know him from Afghanistan. He saved me years ago when I was kidnapped the first time. We were always very

close and trusted friends, but I have no idea why he is here," she tells her brother.

Horatio responds to her statement, "I'll go and see what he wants. I know him too. I saved his daughter seven months ago when she was shot."

Before they can do anything, they could hear Piper squeal with delight. "Look, daddy, it's an old Malinois. Her collar says her name is Charlie," she beams up at her father.

James looks down very surprised at the obviously senior tripod canine, "Charlie, is that you."

Telling his daughter that he knows the dog from Afghanistan. Charlie actually saved my life.

Horatio continues forward to talk to his friend.

"What can I do for you, James."

Surprised, James looks up to see Horatio approaching him.

Piper jumps up and runs to hug her hero. "Horatio, I'm so sorry to hear about your baby sister."

She tells him in a very loving way, James looks at Horatio and tells him that if he can do anything to help, just let him know.

It was at this time Renee has seen and heard enough. She walks around the corner to look at her old friend.

"Hello, James, long time no see," she tells her old friend as she approaches her fellow Marine for a long-overdue hug.

James' jaw dropped, and he went white as a ghost. "I thought that you were dead. The last time I saw you, you were barely alive after you escaped your kidnapper back in Afghanistan. That has to be at least six years ago."

"I was forced to fake my death since someone keeps putting a hit out on me. I'm sure that you heard that Horatio's sister was killed months ago, but at that time, I barely survived," she tells her Marine friend.

She then gave him a tight hug and looked over at Piper.

"This can't be your little girl. Piper, can it?" She asks the child.

To her enormous surprise, Piper answers. "Yes, I'm Piper, how do you know my dad?"

"Well, your daddy saved my life years ago, and Charlie here saved your daddy's life." Renee lovingly answers the little girl.

Horatio and his team might have finally killed the person who wanted Renee dead, but they still needed to find the mole who gave up her location when she was grabbed at Horatio's house and tortured.

That person still evaded the team, but they would get him eventually. Until then, Horatio and Renee were just glad that the nightmare of her dying from being killed by a hired hitman was over.

Renee is finally able to move back to her actual house, and she has Horatio move in until his house is no longer a war zone. She feels that she owes him that much.

Renee is eager to reconnect with James and get to know Piper better. She has known James since before his wife was killed.

James was the only person on the base that didn't think that Renee had disappeared on her own the second time that she had been kidnapped. Renee trusts James more than she trusts anyone except her brother.

The connection Renee has with James stemmed from him being the sniper attached to the Navy SEAL team that had saved her the first time that Renee had been kidnapped. That connection had remained during the seventeen years since her first kidnapping.


End file.
